Poetry by Heart selections

http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/a-blockhead/

Diane Ackerman's "Origami Bridges"

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1057737.Origami_Bridges

Irish Poetry Therapy Network

http://irishpoetrytherapynetwork.blogspot.ie/

Poetry

on Pinterest... http://pin.it/CqsH-Pc

Autobiographical memory & Reappraisal mechanism

 Reading Shakespeare and Wordsworth offer better therapy than self-help books | Mail Online 

Poetry and Story Therapy

The Healing Power of Creative Expression by Geri Giebel Chavis is part of a series library on therapeutic writing worth review. Nothing earth shatteringly original here but basic description of methodology and selection of poems she has selected for use in her bibliotherapeutic practice. Probably a good example of poetry therapy and how it is applied today.

Poetry Therapy advocacy

 International Academy for Poetry Therapy 

Poetic Medicine favorite links

 http://poeticmedicine.org/links.html 

Poetry psychotherapy in SF bay area

http://phyllisklein.com/writing-for-healing/the-therapeutic-benefit-of-poetry/


"In a therapeutic environment, the trained facilitator addresses the healing elements of poetry: form and shape, metaphor, metamessage, the words chosen, and the sounds of the words together (alliteration and assonance). These elements, in association with each other, carry the weight of many feelings and messages at once, creating a link from the secret internal world to external reality, from the unconscious to the conscious.
Because a poem has a border, a frame, or structure, as opposed to prose, the form itself is a safety net. Strong emotions will not run off the page. A poetry therapist might ask his/her clients to draw a box in the center of the paper and write the words inside. Metamessage implies the ability to carry several messages in one line that “strike at deeper levels of awareness than overt messages” (Murphy, 69). Through the capacity to convey multi-messages, clients are able to experience merging as well as individuation/separation."

"Gregory Orr talks about “The Two Survivals”-survival of the poet, in that the poet struggles to engage with the disorder to write a poem, and in the act of writing, “bring order to disorder.” The other survival is that of the reader, who connects with poems that “enter deeply into” him or her, leading to “sympathetic identification of reader with writer.” (Orr, 83-84)

" In poetry therapy with groups or individuals, poems are never edited. Editing belongs in a poetry-for-craft setting."

Poetry Is Quote

"Poetry is about slowing down...it's about reading the same thing again and again, really savoring it, living inside the poem. There's no rush to find out what happens in a poem. It's really about feeling one syllable rubbing against another, one word giving way to another, and sensing the justice of that relationship bewteen one word, the next, the next, the next."
-Mark Strand

Must read Adam Phillips

 http://www.economist.com/comment/1337420 

Creativity necessary for psychological health

 http://www.winmentalhealth.com/poetry_therapy_coping_skills_for_depression.php 

Resources for poetry therapy training

 http://www.poetrytherapy.org/training.html 

Multimedia poetry therapy

 http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=305605 

Haiku as treatment

 http://health.wikinut.com/Poetry-in-Therapy/2xl36r47/ 

Beautifulo example of true bibliotherapy

 http://wvartist.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/millrat-therapy/ 

Poem from Marge Piercy's AVAILABLE LIGHT edited

For Mourning

I wear grey for mourning , never black.

I mourn in grey,

the sleeted Wind,

The color of Ash.

Death comes in as Fog.

Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

I'm new to poetry. Even with a MA in English Lit, I've somehow managed to more or less avoid poetry. Sure, I've read representative classics from the major literary traditions (in English, not much attention paid to poets who write in anything other than our mother tongue in academia unless you can read and translate from the original.) But contemporary poetry has been as foreign to me as Portuguese.

There were haikus; there were musings with rhythms suggesting lyrics for songs I did not know how to play or sing, but no poems. Poems were precious things for writers of purple prose with inflated egos, all that white spacing wasted on the page, just spit it out.

Then I started a certificate program in poetry, because that's the way bibliotherapy is legitimized these days. I wrote some poems, and felt better, more whole, more myself than after 100 hours of Jungian psychoanalysis.

And I started reading poetry. Reading in fits, armloads from the library, pulling anything that might look interesting off the shelves until the weight was maximum capacity for seeing my way down the stairs.

And I found BLOOD DAZZLER, poems by Patricia Smith, about Hurricane Katrina. And I don't have words to tell you. Just as we were struck dumb by the travesty, by both man & nature, unable to watch TV coverage without thinking, no this can't be, we woke to find the nightmare played out over weeks and we had to turn it off to get back to our own jobs, our own realities. Because what was happening down there wasn't real, it couldn't be, we couldn't be that inadequate in saving our own; we couldn't be that vulnerable here in the blah blah of blah.

Patricia Smith doesn't get political. Doesn't point fingers, lays no blame, though how can we not? Surely accountability is at hand? Mother Nature can't take all the blame.

Instead, BLOOD DAZZLER is reported. Journalism, a reporter's personal POV and interpretation of events not covered by the media. Quotes from correspondence between officials and counterpoints of the Bushs' day-to-day while the greatest crime of the century was being perpetrated provides insight covertly. We don't have to cry, we don't have to suffer humiliation, we don't have to care. But we do, because Patricia Smith has made the unimaginable accessible? In her poems, we can let our selves feel, just a little, of the horror and recognize, just a little, of the despair. Because frail humans we be, and a little is all our hearts can hold. Our minds take it all in but there's only a little our hearts can hold, providing a little help as part of the larger container needed to hold all the sadness of those who lived to survive a loss that overflows those old worn out levies still.

editing T.S. Eliot (poetry therapy)

There will be time to digress,
In the afternoon, the evening,
Malingering moment to moment
Crisis to crisis,
Disturbing universes.
I have wept; I have fasted:
I have wasted time; by time am wasted.
Growing old, growing old:
Singing mermaid songs.
How to begin? Why presume?
Women in Michelangelo's room,
Framed and painted canvas on the wall,
Has it been worthwhile, after all.